New member

[Nathan2253]

Hello everyone. Looked and purchased a tank for my son for Christmas and of course we have issues. I don't want to start off with throwing problems at you all so i'll hold off. I'll just browse for a while and see how I like it.

[Merlin707]

Welcome to the forum Nathan, please tell us what tank you have bought your lucky lad and we will be most happy to try and help.

[Nathan2253]

Purchased an Heng Long Tiger1. And of course after the purchase I came across a forum that essentially said that 9 out of 10 come with something not working. Alot of people said that most issues are simple fixes so I wrapped it up and put it under the tree after I charged the batteries hoping they were at fault. Well this morning things went worse. My son opened it and was thrilled beyond words. Put batteries in and immediately had the same problems. Canon would fire one round and lights would blink forcing me to restart the tank back up to allow it to work again. Drove the tank and seemed as though the battery was low. Lights started blinking and had to restart again. All of the sudden smoke was coming out near the front which had me worried. Then the sound of a pop and more smoke. The smell of electrical components burning. Put it back in the box to send back. Really excited about these tanks so what is a good brand? What direction should I be looking?

[greengiant]

One mistake you made was to have the smoker running. They are factory filled supposedly for a short run but must be constantly monitored for smoke output which is really not much until the thing uses up all the smoke fluid and the wick and heated wire in the smoke unit burn out which usually produces a lot of smoke along with the smell of wire burning then no smoke at all.
I'd suggest you turn off the smoke unit switch on the bottom of the tank, open up the tank and look for a wire that runs from the smoker to the mfu and see if it's had its insulation burnt off, if so unplug it from the mfu. If not it should be ok to run the tank with the smoker switch turned off. Recharge the battery all the way ( about 16 hrs with the little charger that comes with the tank) then try running it. The frequent stoppages you describe sounds like what happens when the battery is nearly discharged and you were running it with smoke unit on which uses a lot of juice, with the stock battery your runtime could be down to 10 or 15 minutes.

If smoke was coming from the front or turret area, The small board that has the smoker box wires attached may have had a loose wire that shorted out and then burnt of its insulation back to the main multifunction unit which will burn out the transistor that allows current to flow to the smoke unit. I've burnt out a few myself but in only one did it so much damage to the mfu that it needed to be replaced. I could just run after unplugging the burnt up wires from the mfu and run it without the smoke effect until I got a new smoker unit. If the smoker and mfu are so damaged that the tank doesn't function replacement parts are cheap and readily available for Heng Long tanks. Hope that helps you. I've got around 30 HL tanks and have only had trouble with 2 of them as they came. Both were with wires that were not properly soldered and came off their boards, I presume during shipping.

[jarndice]

Nathan I don't know where to start, well first things first, Welcome to the Forum, I am sorry it all went pear shaped so early on, question, where did you get the Tank? from a dealer or off E-BAY or a mate of a mate? If it was a dealer the first thing to do is to scroll down to the BLACK LISTED DEALERs section and hope their name is not on the list, you then go to the RECOMMENDED DEALERS section and if you find the name, then your problems are temporary and merely requires you to let them know the nature of the problem and they will arrange a replacement or repair, If it was bought off of E-BAY then let the seller know the problem and if you get no satisfaction then E-BAY have their own way of dealing with such people, BUT YOU HAVE LET THEM KNOW! And never be afraid of asking questions, we thrive on them, that's the advantage of having a world wide membership. shaun

[Jake79]

Hi Nathan

Welcome to the forum

I was just wondering why it has been suggested that you charge the battery for sixteen hours, I havn't used a stock one for a while and am not at home at mo to check..I'm sure the charger that come's with the Heng Long's is 400 mah and the battery 1700 so around four and half hours..may be i'm missing some thing...

Jake

[Nathan2253]

Thanks for the info fellas. Baught the tank from E-bay. It's the upgraded version with metal gear box and traxs. The smoker was turned off because it's ridiculously loud. I did end up taking it apart and found the Multi function unit totally burned up. All the connections did unplug with no problem so replacing it is pretty easy. Just curious as to why it burned up. I see two diff setups for the receivers. An RX18 and a 2.4ghz. Whats the differance? I did order another battery as the one that came was a 1700ah. The one I ordered is a 5300ah. Any other things I should pay attention too?

[PainlessWolf]

Good Morning,
Welcome to the Forum! Don't be put off by early issues. RC Tanking is one of the greatest hobbies for Fun on the planet.
regards,
Painless

[wibblywobbly]

Assuming that the battery is being recharged when the tank stopped, rather than a totally drained battery. I think I am right when I say that the Rx18 will stop running at 6v. A fully charged battery wiil probably take 8.4v.

So, we are only looking to replace 2.4v.

A 1700mah battery, divided by 400mah for the charger = 4.25 hours.
2.4v is around 35% of 8.4v
35% of 4.25 hours is just under 2 hours

Have I missed something?

RobG

[Nathan2253]

Disregard this thread as I opened up another in a diff area so I will correspond through that thread instead of having two. Thank you for all your help. I ended up ordering a 2.4 ghz board with remote. We'll see how it goes.